I am just about ready to buy this unit, and thought I had better ask just to make sure.

- one poster on another site said that DivX actually does NOT work on DVD discs, only on CD's. Pioneer's site says the unit does play DivX and does not say "only on CD's"

- as someone else asked - how can I find a unit that already has the new firmware upgrade ? Otherwise I will have to buy and then right away ship it off for a couple of months

- I read several people say that "Finalized DVD’s do not Autostart" - all others DVD's do. I am windering though, if this is important?? So long as they start when you press the Play button they should be ok, although I do not trust every player to be able to start a DVD that way. I have always seen the splash screen intro come up before the menu shows. How do these DVD's come up? Does the intro play but not until you click the "Play" button ??

I decided on the Pio instead of the Toshiba as soon as I saw the following:

Pioneer DVR-640H-S
Records: DVD-RAM, DVD+R, DVD+R DL, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-R DL, DVD-RW
Plays: DVD Video • DVD-RAM • DVD-R • DVD-RW • DVD+R • DVD+RW • CD • CD-R • CD-RW • Picture CD • DVD-R DL • DVD+R DL, DivX • MP3 • WMA • JPEG

Toshiba RD-XS52 and RD-XS35
Records: DVD-R • DVD-RW • DVD-RAM
Plays: DVD Video • VCD • DVD-RAM • DVD-R • CD • CD-R • CD-RW, MP3 • WMA • JPEG

Geez - is that all the Toshiba supports? No DVD+R ?? No DL discs ?? No DivX ?? Kinda surprising.

Thanks guys . . . Doc

The guy said that:

- DivX only plays on CD's because the unit only reads Video DVD's - not data DVD's

- the burned DVD's do not Autostart and that is the way ALL of the Pioneer DVD Recorders are. You can press "Play" to go right to the video, or press "Menu" to go to the menu and Chapters

- he thinks right now it will be difficult to find any units that have the firmware upgrade. However, he said the Techs all know if this problem and they will immediately write up a ticket for me. He also said the 8 weeks that another guy here had to wait sounds excessive, and that the repair phase takes about a week (he did not know how long S&H and processing takes, though)

So I am satisfied and will go ahead with the purchase.

PCdoc

Pcdoc,

I have had no problems with avi files burned as data to a dvd-rw from my pc and then played on my pio 543 (same as 640, except 80gb hd)